


We Share a Family of Blessings

by LockedBox



Series: The Moon-Eyed Prince [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Agni (Avatar) is a good Father, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, But she's not just Yue anymore, Episode: s02e18 The Earth King, Episode: s02e20 The Crossroads of Destiny, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Iroh (Avatar) is a Good Uncle, Moon-Blessed Zuko, Spirit Shenanigans, The Moon Spirit is a gentle loving lady, Yue is not Tui, Zuko (Avatar)-centric, Zuko is an Awkward Turtleduck, Zuko's Morality Coma, see: Ozai (Avatar)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:35:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26768878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LockedBox/pseuds/LockedBox
Summary: The bison had shrank into the distance, but his image burned into his one good eye and lingered there, swimming and shimmering like steam from a boiler.His one hope. His one chance to return home, to regain all he has lost, and he stands there and watches as it vanishes over Ba Sing Se.His Mother had told him to remember who he was, to remember how to change without forgetting what it was that has made him strong, but he couldn’t remember anymore.So when the fever takes him, the Spirit of the Moon comes to remind him, and the Spirit of the Sun finds a way to help him now, as he could not then.
Relationships: Agni & Zuko (Avatar), Azula & Zuko (Avatar), Iroh & Zuko (Avatar), Yue & Zuko (Avatar)
Series: The Moon-Eyed Prince [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1951285
Comments: 10
Kudos: 277





	1. A Family of Blessings

Once, his mother had come to him in a dream that was not a dream, and called him her moon-eyed boy. She asked him to keep a secret, and to remember how to change, and vanished into the night.

That was the last he ever saw of her.

After the Agni Kai, he started hearing whispers of that name. The Moon-Eyed Prince, they called him, though he imagines not for the reasons his Mother had. Azula probably had something to do with it, she usually did.

His father had left him scared. His cheek marred with angry knotted flesh, sallow as if it had been seared back to the very bone. His ear nothing left but a shrived shell, and his eyelids had become warped, smaller and stiffer than they should have been, affixed into a permanent scowl by the boiling and bubbling of the burnt flesh around them.

His eye was blind. It was not his Fathers lesson that did it, but the infection, or at least that was what the physician had said. They had needed to flush it out, or it would have entered through his eye and into his skull, and killed him. It was white now, golden iris bleached beyond recognition by purifying heat.

That was why they called him the Moon-Eyed Prince.

It wasn’t the worst thing he’d been called.

Uncle helped, in his own infuriating way, to relearn how to navigate the world, to compensate and remaster forms now all but alien to him.

It was like being born again, in the worst possible way, things familiar were now foreign, things safe now treacherous, the things he loved most are gone forever, and the one shred of hope he had left, he let go. The bison had shrank into the distance, but his image burned into his one good eye and lingered there, swimming and shimmering like steam from a boiler.

When the fever took him, it was all he could see, he thought that was bad enough, but the fever haze had other tricks to play.

The dragons came for him in his dreams. Blue told him to give up, to accept the roiling fever fire and sleep, and Agni above sleep sounded nice, but Red would not let him, and they screeched and pulled him this way and that, fighting over him like turkey vultures, and all Zuko could do was stand between them and try not to be burned in the ensuing melee.

Spirits he was so tired.

Suddenly the room stilled, and even the dragons hesitated a moment, but just a moment, Blue would not let the opportunity pass and struck again, losing cutting barbs that went straight to the bone, _why don’t you just sleep zuzu, in your dreams you might be able to make father proud._

“Hush!” cried a voice, cool and clear and powerful beyond knowing, and the dragons obey, even Blue.

The girl was made of light, and in her eyes rolled a sea of stars. Her light was so bright, it chased the bison away, and Zuko was too tired to chase after it, so tired all he could do was stare awed at the girl-shaped light. She rose up the stairs, moving without taking a single step, her hand outstretched to him like she was greeting an old friend. Before even that most tender of touches, the dragons fled.

“I know you, you were in the North,” he said, too stunned to be properly afraid. Nothing about her was human, and yet, she wore the face of human girl, one that was familiar, but not familiar enough to name.

“I am Yue,” she says, and smiles, “and we are kin, in a way.”

“In what way? I am your enemy, I have wronged you,” he said, feeling the warring dragon’s breath down his back, could his mother had hidden such a secret from him? Had she another life she had been ripped from and seen it all burn away as well?

“We share a family of blessings. Grandfather Agni wishes to see you. He thinks he might be able to help you now, as he could not then.”

It makes no sense, as nothing has throughout this roiling fire in his blood, but her voice is cool and her smile is gentle as nothing has been in an age, so he takes her hand, and the throne room washes away like the spring thaw.

He travels with Yue through an ocean of stars, kneeling on her head as she swims through the endless, pinpricked gloom. Her pale skin glows, lighting up the strange ephemeral things that swim through this strange dark sea.

“What is this place? Is this the Spirit World?” he asks, peering as far over her blinding bright head as he dares.

“It is another place, a secret place. It is a place between the two places, it switches and folds back, it’s not one but not the other either. Grandmother would know how to explain it better.”

“Like a crossroads?”

“Yes! Like that, or perhaps, a shore,” she mused thoughtfully. She was like a spirit in some ways, powerful and incomprehensible, but in that moment she sounded like a child, more questions than answers. It was strange, but, comforting in a way.

“Who is your grandmother?” he asked. Zuko had been taught that the Sea and Moon were counterparts, but none of the Sages ever spoke of the Sun needing a wife. Why would it?

“Why Anu of course,” she said, and his confusion must have been clear.

Zuko had never heard that name before, it meant nothing to him.

“You might know her as the Sky,” she chuckled, voice peeling like bells, as if she hasn’t just shaken what was left of his world from its foundation.

The Sun was not a thing that needed anyone. Agni was the giver of life, the father of all things, but, the sky had no spirit. The sky, the sky was just a thing, a place the sun and moon travelled through as they played cat and mouse across through night and day. The Sages had taught him that explicitly.

But, Yue had called him grandfather, and to be a grandfather, one needed a child.

To have a child, one needed a wife, a mother.

He felt so foolish for being so confused, but Yue was an endless font of patience.

“Grandfather Agni and Grandmother Anu met at the beginning of things, and with Agni’s light and Anu’s body they made their daughter Medini, the Earth, and for her they made life, and together they shared light and life with all things that came after,” she said, it had the cadence of a folk tale, like something old and weatherworn by time.

Zuko had never heard of such a thing before, or he had, but small things had been changed to make it all completely different. Agni had shone his light upon the world and made life, but he had never had a wife, had never had a family. To be a ruler is to be above such things, above love and attachment. But to make life is to make one a father. It made sense.

“Tui came from another family, but Agni gave me his light and his love all the same. He is a good Grandfather,” she said, her voice pitched low and soft, and gentle, like one might try to soothe a startled ostritch horse.

Zuko bristled at the coddling, but cannot deny she had seen his fears truly. Azulon’s words echoed in his head, and Blue stirred somewhere in his consciousness, telling him to give up and go to sleep. He doesn’t listen.

The place between places they travel through changes, slowly, becoming somehow more alive. Ephemeral things become almost solid enough to touch, and he stares at them in wonder seeing not strange, wriggling things, but men and women, or at least strange, ghostly apparitions of them.

In the darkness, a women lights a candle and clasps her hands, a little boy clutches at the dirt and wails, an old man tips rice into a fire, a woman clutches at her hair and pulls, and then, they’re gone, and then they return, repeating over and over, fading and forming.

Yue swam slowly, delicately picking her way through the sea of ghosts, curling around, over, under, but never through, lifting her fins up and over and never sending them trembling in the wake of her tail. Despite her gentleness, they seem to churn and froth about her, bursting bright and blinking out into nothing.

Zuko is almost afraid to ask what they are, but he does.

“They’re prayers.”

“Aren’t you going to answer them?” he asks, shouts, full of hot anger.

“I don’t know how,” she says, and the anger leaves him. He can’t help but believe her, the earnestness of her voice and the sadness of her eyes are too honest to be untrue.

Most of the prayers last only a moment, a single cry, a question that does not expect an answer, then they fade into nothing.

He would not know what to say to them either.

They swim through the prayer sea in slience after that. Zuko tries to listen to the prayers, tries to hear them and understand, but it is futile, he can’t hear them.

It’s like Mother said, there were too many, and they were too far away. It seemed such a silly, hollow lie, but, it was the truth.

How had his Mother known that?

They come across a woman in the sea, not a prayer, but something greater, greater than him, and even Yue, and it is by instinct that he drops to his knees and presses his forehead to Yues cool scales.

Yue laughs, and the Great Woman laughs with her.

“So this is the little mortal that Agni frets after so. Rise up little thing, and use the voice I have given you,” she says, and Zuko feels her touch, cool as a spring breeze, powerful as a hurricane, and rises.

“It is my honour to meet you, Spirit,” he chokes, he knows well enough to be afraid of this incomprehensible thing, but, it commanded he speak and so would speak. To do otherwise would be stupid even for him.

Yue and the Great Woman laugh.

“Well I am glad to have brought you honour little mortal,” she laughs, and he finally dares to look at her.

There is so much of her, it’s difficult to comprehend what she is, where she stops and the sea of prayers begins. She wore a cloak of light wind over skin dark with night, her eyes bright as the pole star, and she stood before a great loom made of dreams, and on its great frame is a half woven storm.

Zuko doesn’t know how he knows that’s what it’s made from, but, there is nothing else here to make a thing from and he hasn’t questioned anything else so far, why start now?

“It is nice to see you Grandmother, but I cannot stay. I need to bring Zuko here to see Grandfather Agni. Could you please show us the way?” Yue asks, and there is something in the casual nature of the question that gives him pause. This is not the moon spirit of old. This is Yue, and there is something almost unsure in the question.

It makes Zuko’s head hurt, and his heart throb with fear, but neither of them seem to pay him any mind.

“Of course,” the face made of night sky seems to smile, though Zuko isn’t entirely certain if she has a mouth at all.

She turns to her loom, and pulls a strand of starlight out of her head and winds it onto spindle, weaving the fuzzy predawn glow into a thread of sunlight. She seems to have at times two hands, a dozen hands, and then no hands at all, but beneath her cloak there is nothing but the endless sea of prayers and the harder Zuko tries to understand the shape of her the harder it is to comprehend.

She is part of this place, and this place is part of her.

Maybe they’re the same.

His head hurts.

Just as he’s about to give up on trying to understand, just as Blue is about to shout and scream and make his migraine worse just to spite him, Anu presses one end of the thread into his hands, the other end rises up into the sky, wavering in an unseen wind, then falls across the sea of prayers, a single thread of bright dawn stretching into the dark.

“There is the way for you. Do be patient with my dear husband. He is old and not as wise as he thinks he is, but he cares. He cares too much about too many,” she says.

Zuko isn’t sure what that means, so he thanks her, and bows, cupping the sign of the flame into his palm, and Yue turns to follow the dawn.

“Is she, really your grandmother?” he asks, it’s a stupid question, a stupid insensitive thing to say. Zuko has had a habit of doing that.

“No, but, she was Tui’s, And, I am part of Tui that was made of part of Tui, so she is part of me too,” she said, slowly wandering down a funny, winding path of justifications. Zuko waits, as patiently as he can, for her to reach her point.

“And, she wants to be my Grandmother. She loved Tui, and she wants to love me too, and I want to be part of a family again.”

“Is that why you healed Yue?” he had almost forgotten that Tui _was_ Yue now, and immediately felt ashamed at the sad look in her sea deep eyes.

“I healed Yue because I loved her,” she said, or perhaps that was Tui’s voice, her memories left in the part of her she tore away to make Yue whole again. “She loved you too.”

Zuko doesn’t know if they mean his mother or herself, and he’s too afraid of the answer to ask. He knows she loved him, so why fear the question?

If she had loved him, why had she left?

“We’re here,” she says, and Zuko looks up startled, at end of the thread of dawn.

It was Agni.

He ought to bow, as he had for Anu, but, he can’t seem to tear his eyes away.

He is both a man and not a man, a light and a fire and the beginning and end of all things. He is shaped like a bird, like a young boy, an old man, a candle flame and a raging inferno, a dragon and a phoenix and a simple hedgerow bird.

He is, in every way, the Sun.

“Zuko, I am so glad to see you here,” his voice is strong, and gentle, and warm.

Zuko shakes himself from his stupor, and falls to his knees.

“It is an honour,” he chokes, and he feels the suns warmth urge him up again.

“it is an honour I am happy to bestow to you,” he says, and Zukos eyes burn with shame.

Has has no honour, and yet, such great spirits bestowed it upon him so freely, so openly.

_It is what any father would do for their child,_ Red whispers.

_Any father but ours_ , snapped Blue.

Agni smiled sadly, his light dancing.

“You ought listen to your companions. They might get on like oil and water but they do each have wisdom to offer you. Now.” He sobered, and settled, like a flame banked over coals, “you must wonder why it was my Granddaughter who came to your aid all those years ago, when it was to me whom so many prayed to so fervently.”

Zuko did wonder, had wondered, but now?

“I think I understand, now that I have been to this place. You, you could not hear them, could you?” he asks, softly.

Agni sighed, sputtering down lower still.

“No Zuko, I heard, but I could do nothing for you. My gifts, are the gifts of light, and life, and I gave those to you freely, but those were not enough. I gave you so much light so soon that it might have consumed you. My Granddaughter was the only one who could’ve saved you then, but, we cannot interfere when were are not asked to do so,” he sagged, like the last embers on a cold night, and Zuko’s heart ached.

Anu had said he cared too much, and Zuko knew now that was true. How many would he had helped, if only he had been asked, how many had died because they did not know the way to do so?

“I am grateful you tried, Great Agni,” he says, and bowed, deeply.

“I welcome your gratitude Zuko, but please, call me Grandfather,” he says.

“I…” he thinks of Azulon, of Azula taunting him, _Father is going to kill you_ , and the words stick in his throat.

“It’s alright, he is a good Grandfather,” Yue’s voice is soft and cool, and it buoys him up.

“I am grateful you tried, Grandfather Agni,” the words stick and catch, but the glow that envelopes Agni’s form seems so warm and pure it chases away the fear.

“And I am glad you are here, young Zuko, because I have a gift for you,” he says and Agni twists, bringing up a leg to cup his face like an iguanakeet might scratch at the back of its head with its foot, and plucked out his left eye. It came easily, without a sound, and in his talons it burned jewel bright as the sun behind clouds, light spilling out in every direction.

“This is my worth. I give it to you now, to hold close, and to treasure, and know that none can ever take it from you again,” he says, and his voice shakes with finality, the empty hole where his eye once was stared back more damningly.

“I can’t accept this,” he says, and he’s scared, deathly scared of it and he doesn’t know why. In its pupil he saw secrets, secrets he’s kept from himself, painful, frightening things that make him feel like a child again.

“You can and you will. It is your birthright,” he says, and his tone brooked no argument.

He is afraid, so afraid, but Yue is with him, her eyes awash with love he only remembers in dreams, watching and waiting, and all is silent but for his trembling breath and the gentle swaying of Yue’s fins.

It would be rude, to refuse a gift from his Grandfather. No matter how distasteful. Mother taught him better than that.

He reaches up, and cups it in his hands. To his surprise, it is not hot. It is not fleshy, but firm, until it’s not. It flows, thick and heavy like molten gold, but it is only as warm as another’s hand in his and oh he has missed that sensation. Agni’s mighty talon curls around his knuckles, sickle sharp but not for him, they tip his cupped hands toward his mouth and worth pours into him.

“I know this will pain you, but all wounds must before they heal, and know this; No one can take it from you, but you may give it, if you wish it. All my children, and my children’s children, and my children’s children’s children, and all who come after till I am ash and smoke, have known this gift. I give it to them all so that they might know me.”

Zuko wept. He had been a child. A child sent away to chase a ghost he was not expected to ever catch. A child wishing only to return to a home that never was. What good was honour soaked in the blood of children? He wept for the fourty first, for his sister, for himself.

Then he just wept.

“I know it hurts, but you’re allowed to hurt. What was done to you was hurtful,” Yue’s voice was a steady and comforting, he didn’t know how long he’d been weeping. He could feel the warmth of Agni’s touch across his shoulders.

“I was a child,” he whispers, it’s a confession, a revelation, a burden and an unburdening.

“You are a child still,” Agni sounded sad, and now, Zuko thinks he understands why.

“And you are loved,” said Yue, and maybe he can believe it this time.

“It is time for you to go home now,” said Yue. “But remember us and our gifts when you go. You will need them.”

Zuko knew she was right, so he climbed upon her head, and turned, bowing low in gratitude. He knew no words that would say more.

“Remember Zuko, no one can take away the gifts we have given you, but you might share them, and find yourself all the richer for it,” says Agni, and Zuko can hear his uncle in the riddles.

He looked up, and there was not one but two eyes smiling back at him.

His fever broke.


	2. Home Is Where You Find It

When he woke, he’d stumbled to the mirror and searched. He’d wanted his eye to come back, for his ear to hear again, but, he was the same as he had been when he’d collapsed days ago.

He didn’t know why he had expected to look different, but he had. It seemed so stupid, in the light of day.

The fever dreams had felt so real, real enough to touch. The Moon Fish and the Sun and the Sky seemed almost too absurd to be creations of his own, even in his childhood when he had dreamed of spirits behind theatre masks, none could compare to the sheer strangeness of it all.

He tried not to think about it. He was good at not thinking about things when he needed to, when doubt and fear would only drag him under and hold him back. He was good at tempering fear into anger, and anger into purpose.

But he had no purpose now, so he was just, hollow.

He had never been truly purposeless in his life. He had never had the luxury. Even as children he had been two steps behind Azula, always playing catch up whether it be in letters, histories, or fire bending katas. She had run and he had chased, both struggling for the prize of their esteemed Father’s approval that seemed always out of reach.

He should be ashamed. He had had the bison in his grasp, and with it the Avatar would have surely followed. He could have found a way to hold the bison, could have found a way out of Ba Sing Se, could have found his way home at last.

But Uncle had told him to let go, and he had, and now he just felt nothing.

It would be easy to blame him, to make himself angry again, but there’s no reason to, no point in being angry without purpose.

And deep down, he knows that Uncle was right.

So he leaves the mirror, tells Uncle his porridge is delicious even though he hates the slimy way it feels, and smiles and tells Uncle that it’s a beautiful day out because it is, and Uncle lights up like he hasn’t in years.

It’s easy to be purposeless. He slaves away over Uncles hot leaf juice, and doesn’t get angry even when Uncle pours it out and makes him start again, he serves people and smiles even when he feels like strangling them, and laughs at his Uncles jokes even when they don’t make sense.

It doesn’t feel right. It’s like wearing clothes a size too small, it squeezes and tugs, and even ordinary things feel off, the way his Uncle pours tea, the way the candles flicker when he laughs. It’s like he doesn’t fit his own skin anymore, and it squeezes around his throat like his stolen name.

He should try to track the bison. Such a rare beast could not have ventured far unnoticed, but he just doesn’t.

It’s easy to be purposeless, but it’s harder to stop. The well of anger that has sustained him all these years is running dry, and in the place of single minded purpose come distractions.

Uncle makes him go on a date, and Zuko does a stupid thing to make her smile, and even knowing the risks he doesn’t regret it when he definitely should. Then Uncle’s hot leaf juice gets him noticed by another hot leaf juice lover and suddenly there’s talk of patronage and a teahouse on the upper ring. He should speak up, tell him that it will be safer for them to stay in the safety of the lower ring, where the melting pot of refugees make their golden eyes seem commonplace, but Uncle seems so happy, so he smiles and says he deserves it.

It’s a grand, gaudy thing that reminds him of the knife, all bright bravado and cheap wisdom on one side, made in earth kingdom on the other, all the way from the round windows to the carpets in earth kingdom green, warm in the light of the setting sun.

Uncle claps his hands together, and smiles, a bright twinkle in his eye as he looks out over his pride and joy, out over the courtyard, out toward the walls.

“Who thought when we came to this city as refugees, I would’ve ended up owning my own Tea Shop? Follow your passions Zuko, and life will reward you,” he says, in that infuriatingly sage way he does, and his smile is so full of pride it hurts, and Zuko _snaps_.

“What about Lu Ten? He died, he died trying to break down those walls,” he points, stabbing a hand out to the horizon, paying no heed to the way it trembled, “and where is his reward? And now we’re all just sitting here and making tea like it was all for nothing? You could have had a thousand tea shops if you had taken your rightful place as Firelord! How can you just be so, so happy when none of it mattered? When none of this matters?” he shouts, and beneath the anger he wants the answer, needs his Uncles wisdom, but Uncle says nothing.

He’s crossed a line, he knows this, but the words can’t be unsaid.

He’s not sure if he wants to, because with a thousand things he must thank his Uncle for, there are still things in the bottom of that well, ready to be dredged up into the light and give him anger and purpose again.

If Uncle had returned sooner, then Father would never have been Firelord.

If Father had never been Firelord, then maybe Zuko would still have a whole face.

But none of that was Uncles fault.

He storms out, because he knows sorry isn’t enough and he’s been declared honourless for years now, why not act the part?

The moon was bright that night, gibbous and waxing, framed by heavy rainclouds like a painting. Zuko slips through back alleys in that light, and finds a little rooftop in the lower ring to sit on and brood.

He knows he should apologise to Uncle. It’s the right thing to do, the honourable thing, but that’s easier said than done.

Once, his Mother had told him to remember how to change. He’d tried to remember that after she’d gone, held it close like a talisman when he’d lost his eye, his ear, and his home. Mother had known he would need to be able to change to survive, in a way that felt eerily like precognition. Agni, it was hard though, it was so hard to be purposeless. Everyone else was so happy and he was just, lost.

He had tried to be happy, had tried so hard, but somewhere in those three years of exile he’d forgotten how.

“You have certainly not lost your touch nephew, now, why don’t you come down here and spare your poor old uncles knees further?” Uncle is looking up at him from the street, the hem of his fine green robe caked in mud, his hat lost, and his beard askew.

He’d chased him, all the way here, and Zuko hadn’t even heard him running.

“Uncle, I-”

“No, no Nephew, first we sit and talk eye to eye,” he says and holds up his hand.

The building was a small one, barely more than a shed really, so the hand isn’t really necessary, but Zuko knows he’s pushed his luck far already tonight, so he takes it and slithers down to the muddy street. Uncle doesn’t relinquish it, but instead leads them down to sit on an earthen step, his hand calloused and warm over his.

“Uncle, I’m sorry about what I said, It was cruel and untrue and-“ he starts and the apologies bubble and flow like the bursting of a dam, but Uncle quiets him with a look and a squeeze of his hand.

“I accept your apology and I forgive you,” he says, matter-of-fact.

“That’s it?” he asks, because there must be more, because if anyone had said this to him he would have rained fire and fury on them for insulting his uncle so, but Uncle just smiles, softly, sadly.

“I accept your apology because I love you, Nephew. I told you that I have come to see you as my own son, and a few harsh words will not change that, especially not when there is truth in them.”

“Uncle!”

Uncle raised his hand into the air, and Zuko quieted.

“I was responsible not only for Lu Ten, but for every son and daughter under my command. I was not the only Father to lose a child to these walls, just as Lu Ten was not the only son to be claimed by them, but I did not feel their loss, not until it was too late. You are right Zuko, it did not matter in the end, not one bit,” he squeezed shut his eyes, voice hoarse with emotion, and Zuko awkwardly squeezed his hand back.

Uncle smiled a little at that, past the tears shining in the corners of his eyes.

“Come, this is not a discussion to have on the streets, let us go back home and we can talk,” he said, like home was here and not back in Caldera, like home was a thing he could have.

“You know it’s not real, don’t you? Mushi and Lee, they aren’t real,” he says, nothing has felt real in days, like he never woke from the fever dream.

“I suppose you are right, but, like any good lie there is truth in them. The things that make Lee good, his patience, and his tenacity, and his love, those are real. I have seen them, I see them now,” he says, prodding him gently in the chest as if to point out the features he praised.

“Do you think it will be enough? Can you really tell me that it will be enough to matter, if the Dai Li knock on the door tomorrow? If that boy from the train comes back, or more like him?” he asks, he doesn’t mean it to come out angry but it does.

Uncle just sighs, and somehow looks more pained than before.

“When did you stop believing you deserved happiness?”

Zuko doesn’t answer, he can’t.

Uncle leads him back to the teashop, back home, and Zuko follows, feeling even more hollow than he had before, but, it’s a slightly better kind. He feels clean, cleansed, and that is something at least.

Uncle sits him down in their new, clean, empty apartment, and makes him a cup of tea, because of course he does. While he’s not in the mood to drink it, it feels good to have something to do with his hands, something to wave and throw if he wants to, though he won’t. Not yet.

“I am sorry I did not ask this sooner, but, how do you feel?” Uncle asked, serious despite the silliness of the question. What did it matter how he felt? It never had before.

“Like I’m dreaming, and at any minute I’ll wake up,” he says, shrugging.

The thought of spending the rest of his days serving tea to the earth kingdom hoi polloi like he belonged here was absurd. If you’d asked him which was real, this or those strange memories of riding a giant spirit fish through the void, he’d have trouble picking, but, he could admit that both of them were nice dreams.

Uncle sighed, stricken.

“I am sorry, I should have asked sooner. I should have known you would not be so unscathed by your loss.”

“How? It’s not as if I haven’t lost the Avatar before,” he says and shrugs, but he knows that’s not the point Uncle is trying to make.

“You know this was different.”

It’s not a question. They both know that. Every time he’d lost the trail before he’d got back up and found it again, like a shirshu on the scent. This time, he’d given up, and lost everything else along with it.

“You deserve this Uncle. The tea shop. I tried to, I didn’t want to take that away from you,” he says, because he of all people knows what his Uncle has been through, and even if it’s not enough to give Zuko purpose, it’s enough for Uncle and that matters.

“I could have had a thousand tea shops, back in Caldera. What makes it so special to me, is sharing my accomplishments with you. I am so proud of you, prouder than I have ever been,” he says, and the words make something in him tremble.

The moon shines through the window, and the fever dreams come back to him unbidden, Blue telling him that no one had loved him enough to stay, and Red telling her she was wrong, then Yue came to them all and gave her love freely, without expectation, without cause, because that was just how Mother’s loved.

It had seemed so real then. Now, it didn’t matter if it was real or not, just that it had been true.

“I had the strangest dreams, after the bison. About spirits who came to me and gave me gifts, told me things I wanted to know but was too afraid to ask.”

Uncle went still, and set down his empty tea cup with a deliberate, careful motion. Zuko wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

But he had to ask. He had to be sure.

“Father never wanted me to come home, did he?”

Uncle sighed, and in that moment seemed a hundred years old.

“I’m sorry my Nephew, but, I do not believe he did, no.”

Zuko could rage, could call him a liar and a bitter, jealous old man. He could do a great many things to push the words away from his fragile, delicate hope, but he does none of those things.

He knew it was true, deep down, he’s always known, but he’d been too afraid of being purposeless, of being honourless, to let go.

Now? There was nothing stopping him.

Caldera hasn’t been home in years. Not since Mother disappeared and Azula stopped smiling for him. Not since Father burned off half his face and ended his childhood then and there.

He had wanted to go home again so badly. Wanted to be that child again, where the answers were simple, when he could believe the things he’d been taught, when he and the world had honour, but going home won’t bring that back. It would just surround him with their ghosts.

“What now, Uncle?”

Uncle embraced him, held him close with a ferocity he had not felt in years. Zuko doesn’t break down, there’s not enough left in him to feel much of anything, but he lets himself be held while he pats Uncles bald head, and thinks he is a little better for that.

“Now we find your passion, Zuko. You have helped me find mine, and it is time I do the same for you. It will not be forever, but, happiness is a thing that must be grasped when and where you can.”

“But what about the grand opening?”

“I am an upper ring businessman now. I can hire some nice young folks to help me serve tea while you find yourself,” he says it like it’s easy, like he’s looking for a lost key, not rebuilding the foundations of his life. Maybe it was for Uncle, but not for him, no matter what the Moon said.

“I like serving tea,” he says, and it’s not even a lie. It’s something to do and while it’s frustrating it’s better than being without, and it’s nice to see Uncle happy.

“Then tomorrow, we will serve tea,” he says, and smiles.

Maybe it will be alright. Maybe they can pretend for a while longer, long enough to remember how to be happy without a home.

Maybe the dreams were right.

So of course it all went wrong.

They run, away from Azula and the Dai Li. Uncle vaults himself into a topiary and begs him to follow him. He should go, should follow, but he’s so tired of running. All his life he has done nothing but run, after Azula, after the Avatar, after Father, all that has changed now is he’s running away from them instead of after them, and somehow that’s even worse.

He had stood his ground once, for the forty first, and look where that had landed him! He had lost half his face, he had wasted his life wandering the world without a home, with his fat old uncle who could’ve stayed home in Caldera with a thousand tea shops. His fat old uncle who was proud of him, who thought of him as his own son even when Zuko did not think the same in return, who loved him even though Zuko had forgotten why.

He had stood his ground once, and lost his childhood. But there were still things worth standing for, and little left of him to burn away.

Father had burned him, banished him, but Father had been wrong and he would not break him, not then and not now.

Uncle deserved his fucking tea shop.

So he stood, and he fought, and Azula and her Dai Li lap dogs put him down like he was nothing, and threw him into a cave with a young girl, who reminded him of every mistake he had ever made, of everything he used to be, of everything they’d both lost.

She ranted and raved, and spat her truths at him, flailing and lashing out with an impotent fury so familiar that second hand shame settled in his breast.

She was right, and she was wrong. The Avatar had been his one last hope, and he had given it up, but the rest of the world had not. They clung to that hope. It didn’t belong to him anymore, but, perhaps it could be shared.

He thought of change, of worth, and his Mother.

He had told Uncle that’s Lu Ten’s death had been pointless, and there had never been a greater truth said in anger.

Nothing had been achieved, the siege had broken, the ground they had gained, lost, and with it hundreds upon thousands of lives, but with them, Zuko’s fate had changed forever. In another world, Ba Sing Se would fall, and Lu Ten would sit by Uncles side, as Firelord and Prince. He wonders if Mother would stay in that world, if Azula would smile for her, but he doubts it.

More likely, Uncle would die quietly in his sleep as Grandfather had, and all would be the same again.

Maybe it didn’t need to be pointless.

So he talks, tell the waterbender girl about his Mother, about Lu Ten, about his mark, and she changes, softens, as if he isn’t a monster to her anymore, then she offers to do the impossible.

The water tribe girl held the vial up to his face, as if sizing it against his scar like one might a shirt, and he swears he can hear the dragons nagging at him again. _Take it_ says Blue, _take it and run_ , but he doesn’t listen to her.

He had been a child. He _was_ a child.

It had been cruel, and wrong, but knowing that didn’t make it easier to live with. Didn’t make the sick, burning feelings of shame and rage and helplessness any easier to bear, and now the water tribe girl held up a magic vial as if she could make it all just go away.

But she couldn’t. He knew that. That was never what she had promised him, if she had promised him anything at all. For three years, his mark had been his greatest shame, his dishonour, but now? It was shame, but not his. His mark was truth.

It had shown him who his father really was. It was a truth, that he would wear on his face for the rest of his life.

“Then save it,” he says, and turns away from it, sparing himself from the temptation, “this, is not important.”

It feels vulnerable, having the girl there but being unable to see her, unable to hear her through his mangled ear, without his uncle at his side, watching and listening, but it’s harder to let go of a thing he wants so badly, no matter how pointless it all would be.

“It’s your face,” says the girl, her voice oddly echoing in the cavern, finding its way to his good ear despite his best attempts otherwise.

“It’s only a mark,” dishonour yes, but not his, shame yes, but not his, but it’s only his face, it’s only an eye, only an ear. “There are more important things than scars.” He wishes he could believe it. It’s too much hope to put in the hands of a stranger he’s chased across the world like a starving eelhound.

He remembered Song, the girl with the burns on her legs. No one offered her spirit water to give her hope, but she endured anyway. She could have shielded that part of herself from the world and he would never have known, but she had shared that hidden painful burden with him, to try and share in his.

And he had turned away, just like now, because like it or not, it was part of him, it burned down through his skin and into his soul. The boy with the clean face, who dreamed of sitting by his Fathers side, of seeing him smile at him like he did for Azula, of saying _welcome home my son,_ that boy died, he was murdered in the Agni Kai, and Zuko has already spent enough time grieving for him. It wouldn’t bring him back, nothing will.

But it’s still so hard to let go. Life was easier then, not simple, never simple, but the world hadn’t seemed so full of cold and death as it did now.

It had still been there though. Zuko just hadn’t seen it. Zuko had turned his blind eye to it as he spread it across the world.

“Would you like to know how it got there?” he turns back to her, unsure of what to say or why he’s saying it, but it feels good to speak the unspoken, good like he hasn’t felt in three years.

The girl startled, her eyes widening in surprise, but she doesn’t stop him, so he keeps going.

“As the Crown Prince, I was permitted to sit in a war meeting, and observe the generals so that I could learn how to follow in my Father’s footsteps one day.”

The girls face hardens into a thin, tight scowl, and he knows he’s touched a nerve there. Perhaps one of those war meetings killed her mother like they had Lu Ten. Perhaps he had been feeding the turtleducks while those generals burned Song and all she cared about. How many people lived and died in that room he will never know, and he’s not sure if the enormity of it will ever feel real.

“I was so proud to be part of it. But there was a condition, I was not to speak or interrupt the generals. That was easy I thought. I will just watch and learn as these people, who were supposed to embody all the values I had been taught, to uphold the honour of the Fire Nation, discuss their plans. So I sat, and I was quiet, until I couldn’t be anymore.”

“What did they plan on doing?” she asks, and he’s surprised at the softness of her voice. Perhaps it was kindness after all, that made her offer the vial. It’s hard to believe it coming from her, she knows him. She has no reason to offer him kindness.

“There was a division of new recruits. Kindling, they called them, just fresh out of training. They were going to use them as bait, a distraction, just, throw them away like they didn’t matter, and everyone applauded the idea,” he laughs, and he’s surprised by the raw bitterness of the sound.

Even know, he can’t help but wonder about the forty first. Did they die? Did they know that someone tried? Would it have even mattered? It was the day that changed his life forever, but the division is all he can think about anymore.

“Zuko, that’s terrible,” she says, and she seems to mean it. Zuko isn’t sure what to make of that. He had never shown empathy for them. Not till after. Not till now. Maybe that makes them better than he gave them credit for.

“Is that when it happened? Was there a fight?” she asks, and she want it to be true, he can tell, she wants him to be that gnashing, rabid eelhound again, because that’s easier to comprehend than the truth.

“No. There was a punishment.”

Something fragile breaks between them, and so does the cavern wall, and suddenly Uncle is embracing him and there is no more time for reminiscing.

Uncle asks him to choose good, _choose well_ he corrects him, though he knows what he means.

He doesn’t expect Azula to approach him like a sister. Like she never chased him down the gangplank, blue fire at his heels, and in the back of his mind he wonders if perhaps this is how the Avatar feels sometimes. He doesn’t expect her to ask him to come home. Doesn’t expect her to offer him love again.

It’s unfair. It’s all so unfair. He knows that there is no home for him there. He knows that Ozai doesn’t love him because when you love someone you don’t burn half their face off for speaking out of turn, you don’t pit your children against one another like there’s not enough love in the world for the both of them.

She had promised him Fathers love, not hers. If she had promised him hers, he would follow her to the burning rock and back if she’d asked. She and Uncle could have been a family, in another time, another place, but she hadn’t. She had offered Father’s love, a love she didn’t have the right to promise away.

But he still wants it so badly to be true, even knowing what he knows. He can’t help it.

But Azula always lies.

“Father is never going to love us, is he?” he asks, small and fragile and a child all over again.

For a long while Uncle doesn’t speak, and he looks heartbroken, as if he’s lost a child all over again.

“I wish that my brother would Zuko. But for as well as I know my brother, he is your father too. You know him better than I ever will, you alone know what he is capable of.”

Zuko knows. Its written all over his face, but Uncle won’t say that. He’s trying, trying to give him a choice, like Azula had, trying to be better.

But it was never really much of a choice at all.

Azula stands between the Avatar and the waterbender girl, and for a moment, Zuko is paralysed. He knows what they are capable of, and they have her, two to one, and she’s still is sister. She’s still Lala who smiled while she swore up and down that she hadn’t eaten all the daifuku even with red bean paste smeared all over her cheeks, who made mother worry and father smile, but then she smiles with her teeth, and she’s Azula again, the one who surrendered only to strike down Uncle just to make it hurt more.

The Dai Li leap from underground on pillars of stone, and the tables turn against them. Azula commands them like puppets, and they move the battlefield itself to her whims, dancing above around, behind, leaving only steam and smoke as the two peasant children are forced onto the defensive.

He enters the fray.

The avatar is the same flighty, untouchable thing he has known and chased all these years, but he’s grown yet more formidable. When he joins their little ring, puts his back to their backs, his eyes harden, and his stance shifts, he turns again, his back to his, and plants his heels. The waterbender girl is as formidable as ever, if not more so, but now that thing is at his back.

It’s terrifying, but this is the safest place he could be.

Azula snarls comes at him, the same as she has always been. Full of pride, and unrestrained contempt. The first they had shared, the second was a special secret only she and their Father cultivated.

She snaps her fingers, and the Dai Li leap to her will, and she comes at him with a wild, unrestrained anger that he has never seen in her before.

Maybe she did care.

“Do you think you can spend the rest of your days serving tea? Do you really think that this is who you are? I knew you could never match me but Zuzu, this is just sad!” she barks as she forces him back, the avatar pushes forward, through the crashing tide of the Dai Li. The elongated triangle turns slowly as they give and take ground, but Azula is alone in the crashing throng of earthbenders and her focus is single minded.

“I can’t go back, you have to know that what he did was wrong!” he asks, begs, pleads. Azula had smiled for Ozai, and him for her, but it was a smile full of teeth. He would burn her up, like he burned everything else, and she was still his sister.

“He’s the Firelord Zuzu, he does what is necessary. I thought you knew that,” there’s no sneer then, only the coldness of sun on steel, and the throng shifts again.

Reinforcements have arrived and he doesn’t know if they’ll take him with him in the chaos, if they’ll know he’s trying to be one of them, he can smell Uncle’s flames, but he doesn’t know where he is, and hears the frenzied bellowing of the air bison echoing against the cavern walls. The Avatar is driving them somewhere but from his point in the triangle he doesn’t know where, only that he has to go if he wants to survive, but leaving feels like ripping out another tender part of him and he’s not sure if he can stand losing much more.

Azula has always burned brighter than him, but Ozai would stoke her so high that she’ll burn herself out.

And if he leaves her, who would be left to care?

“I gave you the chance to have your precious honour Zuko, I would’ve let you go home, I offered you everything you wanted,” she roars, and her stance shifts, lightning crackling on her fingers as she tears her chi apart.

“You offered me things that don’t exist. There is no home for me there anymore. It’s gone,” he says, _gone like mother_ , says Blue, and he could swear it sounded mournful.

“On that, we are agreed, I suppose you really have changed,” she says, and the lightning arcs.

Zuko has practiced the motions so many times now, it’s muscle memory, down the arm, into the stomach and out, but the others don’t know. His new tenuous allies, the Avatar, the waterbender girl, they don’t know what he can do and they react. The water, once precise, exacting strikes, becomes a surge, engulfing Azula and the Dai Li and pushing them back, but it’s too late now, the lightning is in his stomach, wanting _needing_ somewhere to go, but all around him is water, and in the water is Azula.

He can’t.

He lets it go, and the lightning finds its own way back to Medini.

For the second time, he wakes aboard a fire navy ship, half healed burn scars aching on his skin and his Uncle mopping his heated brow.

“It’s is good to see you awake, my nephew,” he says, voice soft and full of strange unnameable feelings.

“It’s good to be home,” he croaks.

There are no words after that. The children huddled by the door let it shut softly, and leave them to mourn for what could have been.

Tomorrow, together, they will make something new. Something better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this came together easier than I thought it would, after I had a night or two to sleep on it. Originally, I put way too much focus on Zuko's little spirit vision quest. It was fun to write, but it was completely unimportant to the story whether it was real or not. What was important was giving Zuko and Uncle Iroh the push they needed to actually talk about shit before it all turned to shit. This kinda puts me in the awkward position of making the first chapter completely irrelevant to this one, but, I enjoyed writing trippy spirit weirdness and I'm happy with how this turned out so oh well. This was a good exercise in dialogue at least. I'm trying not to slavishly attach descriptions and he/she said to every line of dialogue and just let it speak for itself, but since this is fanfic I also have to skip the bits of canon dialogue that aren't changed, but leaving in enough to set up the stuff I do change. I'd be interested in feedback on that if any of you guys have the time or inclination.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I was debating posting this since this trippy weirdness was fun to write but is probably not what you expected, but, its what I wanted to write and some of you asked for more so here we go. I just like the idea of the celestial spirits being incomprehensibly old and powerful, but they just think humans are the dearest things ever and love them like children even when they’re terrible. Except when they kill your wife of course, that’s crossing a line. There is a second part that’s much more in character and in the real world, but I’m having trouble with Zuko’s voice so it might be a week or two while I faff with it.


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